*Im looking for general feedback, but also am particularly interested to hear advice about my

paragraphs, if they have a clear purpose and are set up well from the beginning. Also if any

section feels like too much summary and not enough analysis. Thank you.

Jessie Haas

Professor Lisa Fitzgerald

English 1

11 October 2017

Essay Two Draft

The American Dream is an ideal that has brought countless immigrants to settle in the

United States, from the earliest days of European colonization of the Americas to present day.

It is the idea that anyone can achieve social and economic mobility if they work hard enough.

Today, the American Dream has been co-opted by materialism. Rather than social and

economic mobility for the sake of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the new

American Dream, that is, success and happiness, looks like an expensive education, a well-

paying job as a result, a nice house with endless gadgets to fill it with, and a luxury car.

Happiness and success, as they are understood today, are materialistic perversions of early

American ideals. Our ideas of happiness and success are counter-productive to personal

fulfilment, serving businesses and corporations rather than individuals, and encouraging

values that hurt us, rather than values and habits that help us to truly be happy.

What was once a worthy aspiration, social and economic mobility, has been co-opted

by materialism and diminished down to the valuing of possessions, money, and social status.

These things are superficial interpretations of happiness and success. Every day Americans

are bombarded with advertisements that send a clear message: buy more stuff and you will

be happy. Businesses and corporations have latched onto American ideals that are at the
foundation of our society and twisted them to serve their own purposes: creating good

workers and good consumers. The idea is simple: work hard and you will be able to afford to

buy these things that will make you happy. But who wins in this scenario? The businesses

that need workers and consumers to flourish. It isnt the individual, because most things we

buy dont make us happy.

Humans are incredibly adaptive, and this serves us in many ways, but it also has its

downsides. One of the reasons why things dont make us happy is that they are so easy to

adapt to (Amin). Amit Amin, in his article The Hedonic Treadmill If Only Happiness

Were As Easy As Marriage, a Big House, and Kids, talks about this power of adaption and

how it can hinder your happiness if you expect fulfilment to come from acquiring things. The

new house or car you bought, after wanting it for so long, quickly becomes the norm. You

adapt to it, until it becomes the new normal (Amin). The advertisements dont end; there will

always be something new to buy. The checklist of the new American Dream - an education, a

good job, a nice car, home ownership - these things do not bring lasting happiness; their

happiness shelf-life is short. One way to counter-act this is to make more small purchases,

rather than fewer big purchases, although this habit seems counter-intuitive to the American

Dream checklist. According to studies, while it is very easy to adapt to large purchases, you

are less likely to adapt to small, frequent purchases as easily (Dunn, Gilbert, Wilson 118).

For many, the first step in the road that leads to happiness and success is receiving a

quality education, but while education can be important for personal growth, studies show

that it may not be enough to make you happy (Amin). Many people go to university in order

to attain higher social status or a well-paying job (Myers 58), and these materialistic

motivations can be very detrimental to your well-being. Being wealthy creates the

expectation of peak experiences (Dunn, Gilbert, Wilson 119), and it is possible that being

educated has a similar effect. Ultimately, those in the category of having the least amount of
education are happiest (Amin), which goes to show that education itself does not lead to a

happy life, possibly because it causes you to value materialism over things that truly bring

fulfilment, such as relationships.

Wealth, similarly, is not enough to be happy. Though it is important to understand

this, its also important to understand that it isnt that money has absolutely nothing to do

with happiness. Money is strongly correlated to happiness so far as having enough to have

your basic needs met. Beyond this, there is a diminished return. Those who are very wealthy

are not any happier than those who have enough to live on and not much more (Myers 59).

At best, wealth will not make us happy; at worst, valuing wealth can actually be

detrimental to your mental health and general well-being. That is, it isnt just that the state of

being wealthy will not bring happiness, but desire for wealth, or materialism, can actually

indicate unhappiness, as well as a score of other personality problems (Kasser 14-15). This

applies to both rich and poor alike (Manbiot). Writer George Manbiot, in his two articles

Materialism: A System That Eats Us From the Inside Out and One Rolex Short of

Contentment analyses hundreds of photos of young people displaying obscene amounts of

wealth on Instagram and comes to some pretty scathing conclusions. He talks about how their

desire to impress seems desperate and their lives seem hollow (Manbiot). His ideas are

actually backed up by numerous studies on materialism, linking the desire for stuff with

unhappiness, personality problems, and weak social relationships (Kasser 14-15). If your idea

of happiness and success involves having lots of money and spending it on possessions and

things that will bring high status, then your mental health may be suffering because of it.

There are ways to spend money that do lead to happiness, and spending money on

experiences is one way (Dunn, Gilbert, Wilson 116). Stop looking ahead to the next step, or

the next purchase. Break the cycle, and enjoy the various experiences of life. For example,

though education itself does not make you happy, the experience of university might, as long
as you value it as an experience in and of itself. Buy a trip to the Grand Canyon rather than a

new television. Not only does the anticipation of future events cause happiness, but the

memories you create while you experience these things hold up much more than things do

(Dunn, Gilbert, Wilson 116-117).

Lastly, though this may seem contrary to many ideas we hold in high esteem in the

United States, happiness can lie in giving to others. Although our values as Americans often

involve bootstraps, as the very idea that you can achieve social and economic mobility

simply by working hard implies that those who are struggling are not working hard enough, it

is important to help others. Studies have shown that we are happier when we spend on

money on other people (Dunn, Gilbert, Wilson 117). In the article If Money Doesnt Make

You Happy, Then You Probably Arent Spending It Right, the correlation between spending

money on others and happiness is examined. Not surprisingly, given the fact that humans are

hyper-social animals, forming strong connections with others is a key component to

happiness (Dunn, Gilbert, Wilson 117). One of the ways to do this is to spend money on

others rather than on yourself. This can involve gifts to loved ones, but it also includes giving

to charity (Dunn, Gilbert, Wilson 117-118). One of the dark sides of the American Dream is a

tendency for an every man for himself approach, but seeing as having your basic needs met

is a crucial aspect to attaining happiness, it should be a priority to make sure every person has

the very least that they need, and this can even help with your own happiness.

The American Dream may have been a worthy goal at some point, but materialism

has co-opted it and turned it into something harmful. While the original ideas behind it can

still be a source for inspiration in your life, you should examine if your idea of happiness and

success are leading you to become materialistic and therefore hurting your chances at

happiness. Value people over things, value experiences over possessions, and give to others.
Helping everyone to achieve their own happiness should be as much a part of the American

Dream as achieving your own.

Works Cited

Amin, Amit. "The Hedonic Treadmill If Only Happiness Were As Easy As Marriage, A

Big House, And Kids." Happierhuman, 2017. http://happierhuman.com/hedonic-

treadmill/ (Links to an external site.)

Dunn, Elizabeth W, et al. If Money Doesnt Make You Happy, Then You Probably Arent

Spending It Right. Journal of Consumer Psychology , vol. 21, no. 2, Apr. 2011, pp.

115-125.,elearning2.uniroma1.it/pluginfile.php/101777/

mod_resource/content/1/if_money_doesn_t_make_you_happy.pdf.

Kasser, Tim. The High Price of Materialism. The MIT Press, 2002.

Monboit, George. Materialism: A System That Eats Us From the Inside Out. 2013. The

Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/09/materialism-

system-eats-us-from-inside-out.

Monbiot, George. One Rolex Short of Contentment. 2013.

http://www.monbiot.com/2013/12/09/one-rolex-short-of-contentment.

Myers, David G. "The Funds, Friends, and Faith of Happy People." American Psychologist.